Life is a Journey: Live it (Part 122)

The other autobiography
„When we talk about the truth,“ I said it loud and clear for anyone to hear while the fire was still burning high, “it must be the whole truth and not any selective truth which in the end comes close to a lie or at least a truth with suspicious intentions.“

Tobias Wittmann responded loud and clear: “That makes sense. Anything different makes no sense at all.“

Susanne Fröhlich added: “It is true. Selective truth is no truth at all but an agenda.“

I was surprised by their wisdom and continued saying, “A problem has a cause and a way. It began at a particular point in history and, over time, developed its own dynamics. When the Portuguese landed on the Gold Coast in the late 15th century, they came not with the intention of finding slaves or a colony but to establish a trading relationship with unknown others and a route to India, as the land route was blocked by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II. To get drinking water and food before any trading items, they introduced the European system of corruption onto the African continent. Kings and chiefs were bribed with pearls and mirrors, anything they had never seen but were blinky blinky to make themselves stand out among their people as special persons. The Portuguese were quick to realise that the black African leaders enjoyed signs of wealth over signs of integrity and wisdom. The outside counts first before inner values shine through. This human nature weakness was exploited to the maximum.

While Christianity is based on humanity, the Islamic African spirits live in village trees or leave the ocean to influence the lives of the people. White God and Allah are merciful powers; the powers of African spirits are negative, filled with jealousy to destroy any opponent. They empower African kings, while in Christianity and Islam, God or Allah empowers leaders of their choice.

As time went by, more Europeans entered the African continent and followed the strategy of the Portuguese. Still small in numbers compared to Africans, they used their weapons and combat intelligence to pave their way through the African jungle into the hinterland to find more precious minerals they could use for trading and boost their economies back in Europe. In these historic moments, while the whites were far outnumbered by the black Africans, the Africans could have seen the real intention of the Whites on their continent. Instead of surrendering to the advanced weapons and military strategies of the Whites, the black traditional leaders could have challenged their people to invent weapons and military strategies to equal the firepower of the white man or be advanced over him. The terrain, which the white man was not adapted to, while the locals knew how to move about, traditional African leaders could have easily, in secret, let new weapons be used to fight back the white man and push him into the ocean where he came from. They could have left burnt soil behind, destroyed farms that fed the white man and poisoned the water bodies the white man used for his drinking water. In so many ways, he could have used nature to his advantage in the fight against the white man. Always remember that the white men were far less than the blacks in these territories. Wisdom and intelligence used could have defeated the whites in Africa, not only during the fights of the twentieth century but right there in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The question is still unanswered why the black Africans did not use their advantage over the white man, but bowed down before his guns and canons like a rabbit before a fox. Rabbits are always more than foxes...just to mention.

Anyway...back to the truth of the matter.

When the European settlers in the USA not only killed the buffalo to near extinction, but also killed many of the native Indians to steal their lands, they thought that boosting their young economy would only be possible using cheap labour. The upcoming industrialisation in the USA and Europe further increased the demand for cheap labour. Private businessmen turned their eyes to Africa, a continent which for thousands of years had known the system of slavery all too well. In Europe, only the Romans took slaves; otherwise, Europe developed on the continent a different form to turn a human into a tradeable thing.

The Ashanti Empire covered, for three hundred years, most of West Africa. The Asantehenes took locals as PoWs as Prisoners of War from various black tribes. Unlike the Geneva Convention regulations, these PoWs were taken as slaves, not as PoWs, and treated right and fairly. When the Paramount Chiefs of the Otumfos decided no longer to give the Asantehene the gold found in his vast land to enrich themselves, his royal household budget went down. He saw the need for an alternative source of income. By that time, the whites were hungry for slaves. As in any market situation, supply and demand met. The leading blacks caught their own in the hinterland, brought them in chains to the coastline, where the white slave traders were eagerly waiting to buy from the black slave catchers their goods, the black African slaves.

Still, the number of black Africans compared to whites was massive, and moral values in royal traditional leaders could have easily stopped the slave trade. In such a fight, some Africans would have lost their lives, but they could have prevented more lives lost on the Atlantic Ocean or in cotton fields in Alabama and Georgia. The more someone waits to solve a problem, the higher the price to pay. Simple logic.“

„Very simple,“ agreed Tobias Wittmann, glued to my lips.

„What is interesting to note is that the African Union initiative is not asking from African traditional royal rulers any form of compensation, return of stolen artifacts and confession that they were part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, as without their active and passive involvement and looking the other way, keeping hands wide open, the Transatlantic Slave Trade would have never been possible.

While the descendants of the late African royal traditional rulers hide behind modern-day democratically elected politicians holding dear their personal agendas, these politicians attack the white man, only asking nations, not individuals or companies, to moral and fiscal account. It speaks volumes that traditional Africa keeps quiet on this matter, as they know the history of their families only too well. When exposed, they fear not only need they to pay reparations as well, but their position in the life of constitutional Africa would be in question. The last credibility and relevance were potentially lost.

This is a very complex issue. To sum it up, what the simple-minded African thinks it is, it is not. While they believe revenge is underway and justice will be served for an African continent exploited in the past and still now, it is far from the truth. In the light of people's uprising in coups against their elected leaders not performing in their interests...but elected by them, never by voters from outside...consider it even when outsiders try to manipulate the outcome of elections and democratic processes...that can not serve as an excuse...African leaders feel the need to use this momentum and divert the anger and attention away from their failed politics and see the white man as a common enemy. In a way, funny as this issue plays out in South Africa right now in another form on the same principles.“